xG table

How do they calculate xG?
It's fairly complicated, but it factors for chances created, and then whether they were wrong foot, correct foot, header, players positions etc, and gives a probability that the chance would be scored for the "average" player in that particular league, against an average keeper. It's the most accurate metric of chance creation for, and against, which is how a game is often assessed on what the result should have likely been.

Something like a penalty would be xG of 0.75, as a player would be expected to score 75% of the time, and a 2 yarder might be like 0.03, to reflect the 3% probability. Then these are summed up to like 0.78, so on an average of games you would expect to score once in ~4/5 of them.

Then the sum of all these chances is added up, to give you total xG and xGA, fo that game.

Our games are listed here, and you can click show xG to see what the chance creation was, you can click each game to see what made up those totals.

Some teams score more than their xG if they have exceptional finishers, or just get lucky, and some get less if they finish poorly, or are unlucky.

I think xG points is calculated from If you have a higher xG (expected goals for) with a sufficient margin over the xGA (expected goals against) then you would be predicted a win, if it's close it goes down as a draw and if you're sufficiently behind then it goes down as a loss.

Some people don't agree with it, but they can't explain why, when you ask them about the detail.

I think it's a great tool/ indicator of how a game went and what the score should have roughly been, under "normal" circumstances. It marries up with my thought that we've missed far too many chances, and the opposition have been unexpectedly clinical.
 
Meaningless stat.
Completely disagree.

I think it's a good way of seeing how a team is performing.

We have been very unlucky in a lot of games and xG table shows this.

The first 4 league games we could've easily had 12 points, instead of 3, and the xG table showed this.

It's just a way of eliminating variance out of football.

I remember a year or two ago, Brighton's xG was top 5 and their xA was top 3 I think, and yet they were around 13th in the table, purely because of unfortunate events during games, some very poor finishing from their strikers (most notably Maupay) and some bad luck...fast forward 18 months or so and the process has continued, and yet the table actually shows them to be in the top 6 (based on the fixtures they've played more than anything).
 
People will dismiss it because they feel it goes against what they want to believe. We’re probably all guilty of this sort of behaviour at times, to varying degrees.

The long and short of xG in the context of this Boro season to date just echoes what most reasonable people can see/know anyway; we should’ve probably had about another 4 points on the board at this stage, but have either switched off at the back in injury time(Stoke, Watford), or hit the post(Rotherham, a quite poor game but one we deserved to win and should’ve won). People will mention refereeing decisions but that’s not really for me TBH.

We are nowhere near as bad as some people would have you believe. We are not really going to bother the top two, three or four places this season. I think that we’re a top-half side and things will even themselves out. We’ll be pushing up from 8th-10th going into January and then the chequebook comes out and the FA Cup starts and the good times roll.

That’s just my opinion, obvs.
 
As a stat it doesn’t mean anything does it. We are sitting in the bottom 3.
It means we're creating more and better chances than the opposition are, a lot more, so puts to bed daft talk like Rotherham deserved a point or whatever, or we didn't deserve to beat Reading, Sheff Utd or Stoke, assuming our finishing is equal standard to the divisional average.

It also means if we had took the chances we are supposed to (like the other teams have), and saved the ones we were meant to (or they were missed, like with other teams), then we would have a lot more points, and not be 3rd bottom.

Do you think that by giving more chances away, and creating less, with the same players, that we would have been higher up the league? If so, how, and why?

Have a look at the recent history on here, for any major league, and tell me xG does not correlate very well, with position https://footballxg.com/xg-league-tables/
 
Remember when Muniz chested the ball by the dugout and then tried to lump it towards goal? Based on xG, he would expect to score from doing that one time in every 12.5 attempts.

Pseudoscientific BS
 
Completely disagree.

I think it's a good way of seeing how a team is performing.

We have been very unlucky in a lot of games and xG table shows this.

The first 4 league games we could've easily had 12 points, instead of 3, and the xG table showed this.

It's just a way of eliminating variance out of football.

I remember a year or two ago, Brighton's xG was top 5 and their xA was top 3 I think, and yet they were around 13th in the table, purely because of unfortunate events during games, some very poor finishing from their strikers (most notably Maupay) and some bad luck...fast forward 18 months or so and the process has continued, and yet the table actually shows them to be in the top 6 (based on the fixtures they've played more than anything).
Slightly similar to us last year, but we only finished 4 places lower than predicted. Everyone is happy to agree why that was though, we couldn't hit a barn door, as our strikers were poor, and couldn't keep the ball out enough because we had Lumley in goal.

I think we can all agree that our striker and keeper options are better, so would have finished higher with these last year. Equally, we're creating more chances and more crosses this year (crosses not on xG) so should be scoring even more (we should be near the top scorers). The chances conceded, and crosses conceded have been very low this year, but we have made a lot of individual errors leading to big chances, and also some shocking ref decisions (early games) which certainly didn't improve our predicted points haul.

We had more right to beat Sheff Utd, Rotherham, Stoke and Reading, than we did Swansea and maybe Sunderland too.
 
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Remember when Muniz chested the ball by the dugout and then tried to lump it towards goal? Based on xG, he would expect to score from doing that one time in every 12.5 attempts.

Pseudoscientific BS
It went down as 1%, for an average player?

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The 4th most creative side in the championship, and with 13 goals from 14.2 xG we've just about put our chances away, but you could certainly argue that a high quality forward signing to play with Muniz, or Muniz signed before season started would see a greater goal return than we have.

Flip side, we restrict the opposition to less good opportunities than anyone else, but with 15 goals conceded from an xGA of 7.5 things have gone badly at that end. You can put 3 goals (stoke, Reading, QPR) down to referee errors (reality is our xGA should be even lower), but that still leaves 4.5 goals conceded that shouldn't have. That doesn't include Giles OG which will have an xGA of zero. We've been unfortune with a worldie from Willock at QPR, a mishit shot turning into a perfect throughball at Watford, but we also have made poor decision in defence. Get the back 5 working as a unit, and maybe consider the CDM position in front, and we should start to climb quickly.
 
As a stat it doesn’t mean anything does it. We are sitting in the bottom 3.
Not really, it indicate how creative you are and how many opportunities you concede and of course the quality of those chances. It quantifies what we see with our eyes. That baring some stupid mistakes we would be much closer to the top.
 
Remember when Muniz chested the ball by the dugout and then tried to lump it towards goal? Based on xG, he would expect to score from doing that one time in every 12.5 attempts.

Pseudoscientific BS
It's actually very scientific as it is literally based on recorded data from a massive sample size.
It isn't perfect but it's much more accurate than using the basic stats we are used to seeing on our screens.
There is a reason why Brentford have been able to transform their club when using data based on xG modelling and Brighton are doing the same (although with a billionaire owner).
 
Not really, it indicate how creative you are and how many opportunities you concede and of course the quality of those chances. It quantifies what we see with our eyes. That baring some stupid mistakes we would be much closer to the top.
Should being the operative word. Unfortunately we are in the bottom 3 because we have average players, terrible recruitment and a stubborn manager.
 
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